NI drivers get 10,000 parking fines every month

Around 60,000 parking fines were given out in Northern Ireland between January and June of this year

Niall Deeney

Published:15:57Thursday 17 August 2017

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Nearly 61,000 parking fines have been given to motorists in Northern Ireland this year, according to new government statistics.

The figures, published by the Department of Infrastructure, represent a rate of around 10,000 fines per month.

Unsurprisingly, Belfast accounted for the largest number of fines.

There were 18,127 on-street parking fines given to motorists in Belfast, over 40% of the total for Northern Ireland. Off-street parking fines in the Belfast City Council area totalled 1,947 or just over 11% of the 17,486 such fines in Northern Ireland.

The figures, which cover the period from January to June, also include a breakdown of fixed penalty notices given for ‘moving traffic offences’ in Belfast’s bus lanes and bus-only streets.

Over 10,000 such fines have been handed out this year, more than a third of which were for offences in Donegall Square East alone.

In Donegall Square East some 3,662 motorists were fined for driving where only buses are allowed and a further 872 were fined for doing the same thing in Donegall Square South.

Drivers were caught out in bus lanes at Great Victoria Street some 1,935 times so far this year while College Square East was the third most-likely place for drivers to be caught out with 1,691 fines there.

The figures for on-street car parking penalty charge notices are broken down into a total of 80 towns across Northern Ireland.

However, parking regulations aren’t enforced in every town, village and city in Northern Ireland so the 80 locations included in the figures represent only those places where there is an ‘enforcement schedule’.

Larger towns and cities, perhaps unsurprisingly, account for the vast majority – over 90% – of the total number of on-street parking fines in Northern Ireland.

The top 20 towns and cities, from Belfast to Dungannon, account for 39,731 of the 43,493 on-street parking penalty charge notices given to motorists in Northern Ireland in 2017.